4 minute read
Essential Ingredients
Whether you are looking for just the right things to bring when staying with friends or stocking the pantry at the bach we’ve got some great ideas for your summer essentials. To create our list we called in some of the Nourish family to tell us their essential summer ingredient, that one ingredient that they just can’t go a summer without.
CHERRIES
I love their burst of flavour and the memories of summer they evoke. Plus they have such a variety of uses, are full of Vitamin C, and so many healthy values.
Sue Dewes-Hodgson, Tranquillo Beauty
TOMATOES
My essential summer ingredient is most definitely tomatoes! They make summer, well … summery and are so versatile. We eat them fresh by the bucketload, dehydrate and roast them and bottle tons to enjoy in the middle of winter.
Emma Galloway, My Darling Lemon Thyme
BASIL
Basil means summer to me! The smell and the colour are so summery. It’s also a time when my garden is full of basil and I’m making a lot of pesto, using basil in pastas, and accompanying basil with beautiful fresh tomatoes from the garden—also, bruschetta!
George – Elizabeth Cafe
SPARKLING WATER
Or more specifically a soda stream that makes sparkling water is my essential ingredient in the summertime. Notorious for not drinking enough water, a glass of sparkling seems so much more sexy! Plus, when entertaining you can easily whip up a refreshing nonalcoholic option for guests, and just as importantly NO single use plastic bottles. Having sparkling water on hand also means you can create light batter for that freshly caught fish or the delicately stuffed zucchini flower.
Vicki Ravlich-Horan – Nourish Magazine Editor GLOBE ARTICHOKES
I love them and wait all year to get some during their short season. Great in risotto, fish dishes, sautéed with cherry tomatoes, capers and basil. As a little snack with vino. Mix of breadcrumbs, garlic and parsley stuffed into each leaf and then steam them in a pot with chicken stock. To eat you pull each artichoke leaf out of the heart and pull the flesh and the stuffing off with your front teeth. Delicious!
If you don’t want to eat them, they make a beautiful home flower decoration. Plus, globe artichoke is a great antioxidant and helps your boozy liver to regenerate.
Noel Cimadon, Clarence Bistro
Sparkling Water
Greek Yoghurt
GREEK YOGHURT
In particular Zany Zeus’ Greek Yoghurt. It can be used in so many ways from breakfasts to desserts. I love making a simple dressing with cumin and yoghurt.
Jenny Meban, Vetro Rotorua
FLAKY SEA SALT
I’d love to say basil and lemon and a really great first press olive oil, but for me, edging out all of these by a slither (I hold them pretty much on the same glorious gourmet pedestal) will have to be flaky sea salt. When it’s hot, a good sprinkle of natural sea salt that has a smooth mouth finish is my summer essential—on savoury and sweet dishes. I’m a total fiend for it.
Greg from Hauraki Salt Co hand harvests from waters just down the road from where I live. His carefully created salt is the perfect finish, plus you can’t get more local, which I love.
Fiona Hugues, stylist and food writer TUATUA
I think summer and I think tuatua, the sweet/briny little molluscs that my family has gathered and eaten over countless sunny holidays at Mt Maunganui. Sometimes, sadly, they are absent from our plates due to detection of paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) in the stock and bans on harvesting them. But in the good years, when there are bumper healthy beds for the picking, we do the "tuatua shuffle" in the surf at the Mount's Tay Street Beach and bring home buckets of bounty for backyard feasting. Mostly we mince the flesh and make a batter for crisp, golden tuatua fritters. I also like them raw, wrapped in fresh bread, with just a squeeze of lemon and a touch of salt and black pepper. For something a bit fancier, I cook tuatua gently in the shell, in a Mediterranean-style white wine broth flavoured with thyme, parsley, shallots, garlic, tomatoes and saffron. You need lots of crusty bread to mop up the sweet juices. Or I flash-grill them in the half-shell, topped with a dash of balsamic vinegar, a dusting of Parmesan, and chopped herbs to serve. Whatever way you eat tuatua, it is essential to soak them overnight in seawater so they spit out their sand. This avoids eating mouthfuls of grit with your kaimoana!
Denise Irvine, food writer
ARTISAN PICKLED ONIONS & PRESERVES
LIKE THEY USED TO TASTE ...
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